Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @02:31PM
from the die-already dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft wants to see IE6 gone as much as anyone else, but the company isn't going to make the decision for its users anytime soon. The software giant has been pushing IE6 and IE7 users to move to IE8 ever since it arrived in March 2009, but it's still up to the user to make the final decision to upgrade: 'The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have. As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.'" Of course some big Web sites aren't waiting for Microsoft. Reader Yamir writes, "Google's Orkut, a social networking service popular in Brazil and India, has started warning IE6 users that the browser will no longer be supported. Just last month, YouTube started showing a similar message."

Move beyond the interface, please. The interface is not the end-all-be-all of a piece of software, it's just one of the features. IE6 is so deficient in today's browser market that continuing to use it just because you don't want to adjust to a new interface is frankly doing a disservice to yourself. You're sacrificing a ton of legitimately beneficial features in order to keep one that is arguably useful in the first place. I mean, tab support alone is a reason to ditch IE6. I thought the interface for IE8 was a little funky the first time I saw it but now, even though I never use IE to do any decent browsing (only for occasional testing), when it opens up the interface does make sense to me. The navigation buttons are clear, the menus are where they should be, and anything that I can't immediately find is almost always in one of the menus in the new customizable toolbar. It's also very easy to customize which buttons or menus go in there.

Seriously, you're doing yourself a disservice by using IE6. If you insist on using IE instead of a more capable browser like Opera, do yourself a favor and give IE8 a month or so to adjust to. Your web developer friends will thank you.

Honestly, I prefer the interface in IE 6 even a bit more than I do Firefox. Heck, really the only reason why I stopped using IE 6 (this was a few years ago, before IE 7 was past beta) for Firefox was that I wanted to eventually convert to Linux and wanted to make sure that I could use the browser. And really, IE 7+'s interfaces simply fail, everything is oversized and it seems to go terribly with XP, especially if you are using the classic theme. I use Firefox mostly because of its similarity to IE and ease

Sorry, I wasn't trying to lob insults by insinuating that you're an IE user.

Here's another question then: if you're not directly using it anyway, so the UI doesn't even come into play at all, why not upgrade just for the sake of security? All other things being equal, a computer with IE8 is more secure than with IE6.

I don't use IE6; I just refuse to upgrade it. It's part of that whole "integrated into the OS" thing -- I'd burn it in cleansing fire if I could. I have been using Firefox for years, and have IETab installed for those few websites that stubbornly insist on using ActiveX controls (like Windows Update).

Then why did you say that you won't upgrade because of the user interface? If you never use it, why does the interface matter? Your two statements are mutually exclusive.

FYI, IE8 allows people to put the buttons back where they were in 6. Both 7 and 8 allow you to permanently show the menu bar, if you want. The new Command Bar in 7 and 8 can be turned off, as can tabbed browsing (no idea why you'd want to, but you can).

Out of curiosity, are you still using Windows 3.x because you also think that the Start menu "suck[s] donkey balls"? Have you even seriously tried to use the new interface, with or without customizing it? Most people seem perfectly comfortable with it.

the basic interface of the GUI web browser has not changed appreciably since NCSA Mosaic, for crying out loud. you have a URL bar with some buttons on the left and maybe some buttons on the right, and a display pane for the page itself below that. i can't even begin to guess what you think is so different between MSIE 6 and MSIE 7/8 and Firefox and Chrome and Safari. they're all the same basic interface. and in the details where MSIE differs, it's easily the worst of the bunch.

Also for internal Enterprise apps. Where I work, I can think of 3 important internal apps that do not work 100% with IE7 or IE8. The company won't roll out IE7 or IE8 because it's cheaper just to stay with IE6 than it is to modify or replace those apps. Windows Vista or 7 is the same story - nobody wants to spend money just to keep up with Microsoft's release schedule.

Good thing firefox works on Win2k. I believe that Opera does as well and probably others. This is probably more of an corporate / institution (edu, gov, health care, banks) thing though. Some where that they need to use IE6 for some specific reason that is not easily dealt with. Like some web based, or partially web based, software that requires it. I know that many would say just upgrade the software but sometimes thats not feasible for some reason (cost, dependencies, etc.).

Except that as MS stated, it's got nothing to do with when all OSes support IE 7, it's to do with when none of the supported OSes shipped with IE 6. So it'll actually die when XP loses support in god knows how many years.

Well I think the point is that ie6 is tied to xp and so shares the same long term support lifecycle. Just because ms won't sell you a new licence for xp doesn't mean that they won't continue supporting and patching it. You don't need to be a genius to understand that.

The problem is that *until* they EoL XP, they can't EoL the browser that XP ships with. In other words, they are trying to EoL IE6, but can't for the same reason that they can't EoL XP - it's still being deployed and used! This is not that complicated... once they can get rid of XP (something they've been trying to do for years), they'll probably drop support for IE6 the same day (why support one component of an entire OS that is no longer supported?).

Since we rarely upgrade software here until it's officially EoL'd, that MS isn't dropping this means no real chance for IE 7 or 8 for another year.

Which means I have to explain to the using class why their browser at work looks different from the one at home. Somehow, "It's a different version" only sinks in for about a week; after that, it's passed through the other end, and they have to be reminded again.

Absolutely, not arguing that:) my friend, almost like you, is still running Win 95 from home; on top of that he's hosting tiny personal web server on that machine. He spends his spare time (for fun) patching and making sure that machine is secure.

I'm pretty sure that Microsoft are *happy* that these websites are dropping support and guiding their users in the right direction. That'll make things easier for Microsoft to move forward too. They put their focus behind Internet Explorer 8 now, and of course want to do that. But I can understand their stance -- their customers would raise hell if they just plain made an exception from their product lifecycle policy for the web browser, that just happens to be among the most used products in Windows there is.

I have to tell you, IE8 runs horribly on my desktop computer. When I installed XP over 2000, I upgraded right from 6 to 8 and hated it. The startup time was ridiculous, something like 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and opening a new tab took just as long as starting a new instance of IE8. Even after starting it once, starting it again wasn't must faster. That's my reason that I "downgraded" Internet Explorer to version 7, which really was an upgrade from version 8 in terms of performance, starting in about 3 seconds instead. I suppose that I can't be alone in this - there must be others for whom 7 or 6 runs better than 8 for whatever reason.

I know as far as I'm concerned IE7 fixed a lot of bad things with Internet Explorer that made it a big difference over 6, whereas 8 just seems to be an incremental improvement over 7 that really should not be pushed by Microsoft as a Critical Update. MS is probably coming out with frequent updates like this now just to try to stay competitive with Firefox and Safari and Chrome. I know that the Steam Overlay browser which embeds IE's Trident engine certainly got a speed boost from me going with 7 over 8, and that's the way it's going to stay unless and until Microsoft releases something newer for me to try on Windows XP. With Vista and soon Windows 7 out in retail, I don't think anything else is coming for XP users though.

Good thing I don't even use Internet Explorer as my primary browser then. Long live my mighty combo of Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror!

Let me get this straight. You did an in place upgrade of 2000 to XP? If so, that's the reason your computer is slow and the performance sucks. You're obviously using an older computer given that you were running 2000 on it, and given that limitation, XP isn't going to be the fastest OS ever. The UI should be faster than 2000 but you probably won't be able to run as many apps simulatenously. You can't really make a reasonable comparison between IE6 on a fresh Win2K install versus IE8 on an in place upgrade of XP. Do a fresh install of XP, then install IE8 and it will run better.

Due to a number of questions and assumptions that arose due to what I suppose was my lack of explicitness, I shall try to clear the water here:

I didn't upgrade to XP from 2000 sooner because...1) The default XP GUI sucks.2) It's more of a resource hog than 2000.3) You have to deal with activation and Windows Genuine Advantage.4) XP wasn't really a good choice until SP2 came out, as SP2 combined with the earlier advances of SP1 to address many issues that XP suffered from.5) I wasn't going to pay for a new v

they would simply stop accepting the browser at ALL OF THEIR SITES. If they did that, nearly all of the rest of the world would follow suite. NOBODY in the development world wants this demoniacal abortion. BUT, while MS continues to accept, then everybody else is forced to accept it.

A couple of years back, I did a clean install of Windows 98, which came with Internet Explorer 4.0. It crashed on just about everything, including Microsoft's update site, Mozilla's download pages, and Google. I had to go through old magazine CDs to get it updated to something usable.

If software or a service stops working... people get pissed. They will be mad at the manufacturer or service provider.

But we expect computer systems to get slower over time. If software or a service just gets gradually crappier and crappier performance... eventually people will get annoyed and switch or upgrade, but they'll assume that it's just "business as usual."

Another option is to add a lot of links and features that are only available in IE8. If the basic thing con

Yeah, sure it was great for MS to support a product that was made obsolete 3 years ago by the release of IE7, and then doubly-obsolete by the release of IE8.

Do people really expect product support for a release of software 8 years old that has been superseded by two version upgrades? I hope not. Especially since they got it for 'free' with their operating system. (Ha!)

I had to reread the headline and summary, and the headline again to make sure. IE6 has been deprecated and should be dropped, but it is still being supported? I think I am suffering from cognitive dissonance. [wikipedia.org]

I suspect that's the case for many people, at least in the US. It's on my company PC, which I have no control over. The scary part? I work for a gov't contractor. A big one. And the IT people have no interest whatsoever in trying something new.

Even my 11 year old laptop, which is still alive, runs FireFox on Win98. Not very quickly, mind you, but faster than it ran IE.

For reference, it's a Gateway (Gateway 2000 at the time) original Pentium 200 MHz "MMX" with 48 MB of RAM. And it only has a 10-base wired ethernet card anyway, so it's not like browser speed matters much.

I find it sad that a decision by a single company can create small, flaming hoops for the Internet to jump through. I'm happy that the browser (r)evolution we're experiencing is helping this, though. With all this sudden competition, it's not only forcing the browsers to whip up into Interwebs standards but also get rid of the monopoly that Microsoft has over the browser market. Hopefully, we'll never be at this strange crossroads again. Gogo capitalism!

Hell, I'm amazed Microsoft doesn't just annoy the IE6'ers into submission. That doesn't seem out of their league.

As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade.

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Quite to the contrary. Microsoft makes it very difficult for users to upgrade to the latest version. FireFox and Opera both still support the current versions of their browsers on Windows 2000. Yet Microsoft had dropped Windows 2000 from their list of OS's supported by their newer browsers long ago, even when Windows 2000 was supported by Microsoft.

Have you ever wondered why all the other browser developers can support Windows 2000 while Microsoft is completely unable to? I mean, if the Microsoft engineers say they want to make it easy for people to upgrade, then I'm sure there must be some fundamental technical issue with IE that stymies the engineers, and prevents them from doing what they say they want to do. What is the problem that prevents Microsoft from bringing newer versions of IE to Windows 2000?

"What is the problem that prevents Microsoft from bringing newer versions of IE to Windows 2000?"
The answer to that question doesn't have to be any harder than "Because some executive decided it shouldn't be done".

I do suspect, though, that the reason could be a bit more technical. Since IE is (according to all statements by Microsoft) an integral part of the operating system, it can be dependent on various things being present, and will not work correctly without these. The differences between the var

Microsoft made a *business decision* not to release IE7 for Windows 2000. That doesn't imply anything about Microsoft's engineering capabilities; it possibly (but not likely) implies something about their management ability.

Look at it this way: Flash can open older.fla files, but only one version older. That is, Flash CS3 can open Flash 8 files, and Flash 8 can open Flash 7 files, etc. But Flash 8 can't open Flash 6, and Flash CS3 can't open Flash 7. Wow! That sure prov

Have you ever wondered why all the other browser developers can support Windows 2000 while Microsoft is completely unable to?

Its not that Microsoft is "completely unable" to support W2K, its that they choose to not spend resources supporting it. In doing so, they are attempting to force customers to pay to upgrade to a newer (supported) version.

Meanwhile, Mozilla and Opera are choosing to support W2K in order to gain market share for their browsers from customers that are choosing not to pay Microsoft to upgrade their OS. This provides them with the benefit that if the user likes it, if and when they decide to upgrade, then they

Have you ever wondered why all the other browser developers can support Windows 2000 while Microsoft is completely unable to? I mean, if the Microsoft engineers say they want to make it easy for people to upgrade, then I'm sure there must be some fundamental technical issue with IE that stymies the engineers, and prevents them from doing what they say they want to do. What is the problem that prevents Microsoft from bringing newer versions of IE to Windows 2000?

Ubuntu LTS is to be supported for 5 years, but only with limited backported software, not even the most important software package like major upgrade of gnome, firefox, open office are always available in the backport repro.

while Every release of Windows is LTS, and as long as 10 years! Also, new core software upgrade are usually offered even after a long time. (IE8, Live Messenger 9, Office 2007 on XP, a 6 years old product!)

On Linux? Even if you get the source, the chance of compiling the latest software bits on a 6 years old box is unlikely...Either kernel updates are needed, or glibc, or missing libraries, or the dependent libraries needs new GCC...usually end up upgrading GCC+Glibc+Kernel+whatsoever to get some new software. Or to put it simply, either spend a few days to figure that out, compile and install the dependencies else where, or to upgrade the distro.Hey but I just want that new software, but keeping all my old software and configure...they didn't break and I don't want to touch them.

Besides unstable hardware support, I have been using Linux for 10+ years and this is the single thing that I hate most...when will debian package support libraries of different version installed side by side...?

Think about it...I think Microsoft is really doing an excellent job here. Although DLL Hell induced problem sometimes do happen (but a lot less since XP...), but still when they are still adding new features for a 6 years old OS. What else can you expect?

How was this modded insightful? For starters, the main reason to use a LTS release is BECAUSE they do not upgrade core components. This is meant to appeal corporate customers. If you want the latest software, you can set automatic upgrades of the WHOLE OS every 6 months - for free no less. So take your pick.

Secondly, installers from third party vendors (with the exception of hard-core database stuff) don't care which distro you are using at all, much less which version.

``Ubuntu LTS is to be supported for 5 years, but only with limited backported software, not even the most important software package like major upgrade of gnome, firefox, open office are always available in the backport repro.

while Every release of Windows is LTS, and as long as 10 years! Also, new core software upgrade are usually offered even after a long time. (IE8, Live Messenger 9, Office 2007 on XP, a 6 years old product!)''

On the other hand, you can upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu free of charge.

As for having the latest software on an old version of Ubuntu, I believe it is actually a feature that they don't do that. Keeping the software versions the same throughout the lifetime is the best way to ensure that what works today will work tomorrow. If you want newer software... you can get the free upgrade.

So, all in all, comparing Windows and Ubuntu, both have their advantages.

They didnt gave a choice to users when installed by default that. Then they forced users to depend on it promoting/giving away/etc technologies (ActiveX anyone?) and (their own twisted definition of) "standards" tied to IE6. But even them had to recognize that it was wrong, security hell and that broke half of internet. Now they wash their hands, and keep their trapped/tied/addicted to IE6 users that way because "oh, they have the choice" instead of try to help them to break that dependence (a "fix" that co

For the same reason companies don't want to upgrade to Windows Vista is the same reason why they don't want to upgrade from Internet Explorer 6.0, legacy software.

I can tell you as a programmer analyst for the past 17 years that when developing a web application for Internet Explorer that each new version change will wreck legacy software written for an earlier version of Internet Explorer. Not only does the VBScript and Javascript engines change, put also the ActiveX files you used for controls will change as well and stop your client code from working.

Since the Dotcom bust of 1998, companies have been trying to save costs by sticking to legacy software and only fixing bugs and making the code more secure rather than upgrade to newer versions. They learned that by being cutting edge, it tends to bleed a lot of money out of the company for lost productivity waiting for a fix, paying high priced developers the money to upgrade the code or rewrite it for the newer platforms, sometimes even contracting out the work to the lowest bidder (usually meaning offshoring the work to another company with cheaper labor) in an effort to try to save on costs.

Windows 2000 and lower won't run IE7 and up, so companies are forced to upgrade hardware as well as software to get to Windows XP and beyond. Soon XP support will be gone and then it will be Windows Vista or Windows 7 and whatever comes after Windows 7 (Windows 8 we assume?) and IE9, IE10, etc.

Microsoft makes money by changing how things work and then charging for training and certification on that new technology as well as selling books, etc to explain how to upgrade to the newer technology. Any company that does this ends up spelling millions of dollars every three years just to upgrade, and by the time they do upgrade a new technology was released that stops the upgraded code from working and they have to start all over again to rewrite the code yet again.

For example, many companies just updated web code to use IE7, and then IE8 comes out and wrecks everything. Now they have to rewrite it again, and in three years when IE9 comes out, they start all over and do it again.

It would be cheaper to just use non-Microsoft standards like Java, Python, C++, etc on Linux or a Non-MS operating system that doesn't change how things work every three years or so. But companies are locked into Microsoft solutions that are ever changing.

Ive never seen a fresh XP SP3 so I honestly dont know. Was IE7 part of SP3? If not cant IE8 be part of SP4? That way IE6 support dies when XP SP3 (or 2 if they did include IE7 in SP3) support dies.

That is a way of doing it. Until then web designers should get tough, just because Microsoft cant drop 'support' for IE6 doesn't mean that websites are tied to that support contract at all. They can easily do a browser check and anything that reports IE6 (or earlier, there are 98 and 2000 machines out there) the server can simply redirect them to a page that links to browsers web sites (Firefox, IE8, Chrome, Safari etc).

Google seems to be the biggest supporter of this move and they can make a major contribution as Google search engine, Gmail and YouTube are all very popular products. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can also have that sort of influence.

Upgrade the browser to be more standards compliant and keep IE6 compatibility and the browser winds up being huge. And probably a pain in the rear to use. And probably a security nightmare as well.

Or drop IE6 compatability and break untold numbers of corporate intranet web pages that were written to and depend on the broken IE6 model. And the corporations whose internal applications that just broke because IE6-mode was removed are the same corporations that you want to upgrade to Vista and/or Windows 7.

Not a great choice.

Tick off those corporations and after they re-engineer their internal web sites to be usable with something other than IE6 and they've done a good chunk of the work necessary to think about changing the corporate standard desktop OS as well. I imagine there will be some companies that will wonder "Why the hell are we sticking with this software, anyway? Look what it just cost us to clean up the internal web sites!" Or... companies will keep things as they are when the new IE retains the IE6 behaviour. But I'm betting that they can count on there being an increasing amount of grumbling from the employees who have to use external web sites and cannot render web pages properly with Microsoft's bloated browser. The corporate IT folks will have to standardize on a desktop that includes a non-MS browser that one can use for the external sites that are written according to accepted standards and IE that they need to use for the broken^Wnon-standard pages that were developed internally.

I wonder how many newly trained web programmers will want to continue writing around IE6 quirks and for how long.

I don't understand why dropping support would mean that IE 6 stops working. IE 6 will continue to work just as it always has unless Microsoft intentionally cripples it. Just because the Internet no longer supports IE 6 does not mean that IE 6 does not work.

Right, but any patches would not affect IE6 once IE6 drops off support. When MS drops support on a product, that means you don't get patches for even discovered and documented bugs.

Corporations would scream blue bloody murder.

The same corporations who cannot upgrade from IE6 because so many software vendors made web-enabled applications using then-current Microsoft tools that specifically took advantage of features in IE6 that are not carried forward to IE7 or IE8. Companies purchased these packages because they were Web-enabled, and therefore should be less sensitive to the version of the operating system that the client PCs ran on. Except that software created by Microsoft toolkits back in the early 2000s were NOT "Web Enabled", they were "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Enabled".

So the companies now have to look forward to an upgrade to massively important and multi-user software packages like Siebel, because only the newer versions can run on a newer browser. But the newer version is not an in-place upgrade because packages like that tend to be integrated to other systems, not standalone apps. So you have companies running Windows 2000 desktops and IE6 because an upgrade to either XP or IE7+ will shatter compatibility.

Our company runs IE6 (but at least we are on XP SP2). If you try to use Firefox on the Intranet, a lot of bits don't work, and that is the primary reason we're told the company isn't going IE7 or better anytime soon. We have a massive Intranet that was all built using Microsoft tools, and upgrading it would be a monumental task.

Fortunately, at my current company, it's "only" the Intranet. Most of the important stuff happens on mainframe and midrange machines, and the greenscreen telnet apps really don't care what OS they run on. (grin)

But I did work for a large multinational when they were implementing Siebel, and the Siebel guys all had to get their brand-new laptops reloaded with Windows 2000 because Siebel "broke" in XP, even on XP running IE6. This was 4 years ago, in 2005.

> If your company is not already looking at what needs fixed to upgrade from IE6 and at least defining a plan of action complete with cost estimates, they are going to get screwed

You're right about Win2k, but (as mentioned in TFA) IE6 also shipped with Windows XP and thus it is my understanding that MS is committed to support it right through until 2014 when XP starts to become unsupported (and god knows what kind of 'extended support' options MS may still have for the die hards that are willing to be raped financially rather than fix their own software).

So there is really no light at the end of tunnel yet - we're still staring at 5 - 6 years more of at least some not-insignificant fraction of users using IE6.

Yep - corporate requirements often force IE6 - for instance, my company uses features of Adobe SVG viewer that are still not supported by ANY browser even though many claim SVG support. We know Adobe doesn't support their own SVG viewer, but we have no choice but to continue to force it down the throats of our customers with IE6 until Firefox, Webkit (Safari, Chrome) and Microsoft (IE7 and 8) add the features we need. Webkit is closest if I remember correctly - I believe only one or two outstanding issues now, and IE 7/8 is last (by a long shot) with Firefox in the middle.

And sadly, they will jump right into the awaiting arms of silverlight. Won''t anyone learn thier lesson and get off the crazy train? I dropped MS as an office platform (server and client) in 2001. Made sense then and it makes sense now.

That's the point. IE 6 was designed to work with a specific set of web interfaces that Microsoft has limited control over. If websites stop using those interfaces, then all bets are off. IE 6 still works. It just doesn't work with modern standards that it was never designed to work with.

Not exactly. IE6 is part of Windows XP. If XP is supported, so is IE6. That's basically what TFA says.

And yeah, i really wish XP will have dignified death, not like NT4 - which is still around:(

What's wrong with NT4? By the time of SP6a, it was a mature, stable OS. The only reason my former company moved away from NT was due to lack of drivers for newer PCs. The OS was stable and the number of system crashes per month for 250 system was less than 5. We kept track to remind people of how bad the Macs were that we replaced, which was a MUCH higher number. This was back in the late 1990's.

And now, XP is a mature, stable OS worth keeping around. It will run on tiny video cards, relatively slow p

A number is just a number, unless it is demonstrably tied to something. 6000, 7000, and 7600 are almost certainly the same freaking kernel, with a few tweaks. MS didn't completely rewrite the whole kernel. Add this, subtract that, tweak a behaviour there, recompile, and assign a build number. Do a file difference on them all - then do NT5.1

With 32bit XP SP1 you could access 4GB of RAM (4.5GB or more of address space)

With 32bit Vista SP1 you can only access at most 3.5GB of RAM (a 10..20% loss!)

To go above 4GB of RAM you need a 64bit version of XP (Yes XP!) or a later desktop variant.
OR The 32 bit Windows 2000 SERVER variants will go up to 32Gb (64Gb if you asked nicely). Windows 2003 goes up to 128Gb. Intel did a good job of stretching 32bit, though in truth 64bit is now better.

"That spokesperson must not have seriously studied ms' history, or is too enamored with the company to be honest about it."You seem to have some serious misconceptions about what a "Spokesperson" role is...